Like most stories, Hajimete no Gal’s story occurs through story arcs. It’s just unfortunate that most of these story arcs boil down to “Oh no, something bad is going to happen to the girl(s). Well, time for the protagonist, Junichi, to temporarily man up and do something.” While the arcs do allow some of the characters to shine-- which result in some of the better moments in the anime—a lot of the conflicts could have been solved or prevented altogether if people would have just sat down and talked it out. This is especially true for the final arc of the anime and also why it was so frustrating to see it play out. Not only that but even when the good parts are happening, the shot direction can take a turn for the worst like when there is panning upskirt shot of a female character during a tense scene in a café near the end of the anime as if to say “We know it’s not that great of a story so here’s some unnecessary eye candy.”
The story is also filled with blatant clichés. For example, despite Junichi clearly be in a relationship with one girl and one girl only, he still manages to develop this pseudo-harem of girls who all want him for one reason or another and he somehow only realizes the girl wants him when the girl in question blatantly tells him. Or “Hey it’s the king’s game, let’s conspire to have the girls kiss us!” Or “Hey it’s the hot springs, let’s go peek on the girls while they’re naked because we’re not ‘real men’ if we don’t.” Or “Hey, that person’s more attractive than me in basically every way, it sure would be a shame if I had pre-existing self-confidence issues and went into a state of depression which lead to conflict.” The anime doesn’t strive to do anything different and, at the same time, anything it does attempt to do story-wise isn’t executed particularly well.
For most romcoms, characters are the defining aspect which will most likely make or break the show. Hajimete no Gal’s characters definitely break the show for me. Barely any of the characters have any clear motivation so you don’t really know what makes them tick and the majority of the characters are one-dimensional. Most notorious of these is Junichi’s lolicon friend and the show’s constant reminder to you “Oh yeah, did you know he’s a lolicon?” If you were to stop watching each episode the moment the anime reminded you that Junichi’s friend is, in fact, a lolicon, you would probably never be able to watch a single episode in its entirety, it’s really that bad. Junichi’s other two friends are the blue-haired guy with glasses who is a super otaku who is also the mastermind of the group and the blonde guy who I think is an avid gamer. All four of the males are perverted and they definitely give off a Prison School vibe. It’s just that Hajimete no Gal’s male group is the stale, knock-off, store-brand-cereal-tossed-in-the-clearance-bin version of the group from Prison School. You can tell by the lack of names of these characters in describing them how memorable they were to me. None of Junichi’s friends are really developed in any way and despite being the main protagonist, Junichi’s own development seems stunted and/or extremely slow because it doesn’t seem like he changes much through the course of the anime’s ten episodes, if at all. By the end of the anime’s tenth episode, Junichi doesn’t seem to accomplish much other than manage to keep his girlfriend and maybe gain a little confidence. Other than that, Junichi is essentially just used as the conduit for most of the fanservice in the show, whether it’s through his random fantasizing or simply existing around the four main girls.
On the flip side, the four main girls of the anime are Yame, Ranko, Kashii, and the childhood friend in major need of breast reduction surgery who also calls Junichi “Onii-chan”. Of the entire cast, Ranko and Kashii are definitely my favorites and are coincidentally also the most developed characters in the entire show but I’ll first address the final and the first of the four girls, in that order. The childhood friend in major need of breast reduction surgery who also calls Junichi “Onii-chan” is essentially how I would describe that character to someone who’s never seen the show and it’s also her character in a nutshell. But, there’s an extra layer of being an emotional support imouto who wants to be seen as a woman by Junichi and also have sex with him and marry him because childhood friends of the opposite sex need to make marriage promises when they’re young but only one of them remembers that promise being made in the first place. In the beginning, she had a fairly annoying running gag that involved her literally running but that stopped after she developed more as a character and began intruding on Yame and Ranko when Junichi was around. Despite being the “main” heroine, Yame seems strangely underdeveloped. We know she’s an overall nice person who is often adverse to lewd things despite the stereotypes surrounding gyaru and is in love with Junichi but, perhaps due to the story revolving around Junichi’s point of view, she’s consistently somewhat of an enigma. While her actions obviously follow a clear line of logic that makes complete sense to her, the audience is often just completely oblivious to what’s happening in her mind so her actions can seem somewhat random or confusing to the audience-surrogate Junichi, which is a main component of the conflict in the final arc. Ranko, on the other hand, seems surprisingly more developed than the main girl Yame. She actually has some character motivation, however simple, and she definitely steals the spotlight at times. She also gets some random meta love at times like when Ranko was dressed up as Miki Sayaka from Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica in the cosplay café was an interesting nod as her Japanese voice actress, Kitamura Eri, also voiced Sayaka, though this may have just been completely coincidental. Weirdly enough, the character with the most development is Kashii, who ends up going through her own character arc that ends up spanning most of the anime and even ends up solving a conflict on her own while Junichi is busy yelling about how morally inferior someone else is.
As far as sound design goes, the sound effects are the typical stock affair you can find pretty much anywhere and the music is forgettable. While the voice actors seem to do their best with what they’re given, they’re rarely given anything that allows them to work their magic. Overall, the sound design in the anime is average at best but there are still points where it misses its mark.
The art and animation are definitely where the anime falls on its face the most. The animation consistently feels lazy or incompetent and I often found myself surprised when there were legitimately good sections of animation, however rare they were. There are often times where the characters themselves look off-model with their body parts being over or under-sized and, on top of that, looking poorly drawn. The eyes, in particular, will often be lopsided on characters’ faces and tend to have an overall lifeless look to them for most characters, which seems to be particularly true for Yame.
Hajimete no Gal is an anime a few good parts but its many flaws simply hold it back from being average and, even for a “guilty pleasure” anime, it falls short of almost all others in its category. It manages hits that sweet point where it’s essentially unrecommendable; it’s definitely not good but, at the same time, it doesn’t quite reach the point of “so bad it’s good” infamy.
3 out of 10
